Several of these firms bounced back, as American intends to do, but many died for good. Their collapses came about by a scary variety of causes: criminal CEOs, overambitious expansion, or simply disastrous circumstances, to name a few.

The range of industries represented, however, is narrow. Finance, automaking, and energy nearly cover it.

The bankruptcies are ranked by the value of each company’s assets before its bankruptcy filing.

Pacific Gas & Electric Co

Filed Chapter 11: 2001

Value at bankruptcy: $36.15 billion

What happened: PG&E, California's largest utility company, fell victim to the state's electricity crisis of 2000-2001. Blackouts swept the state and costs soared, blamed in large part on California's deregulation of the energy industry in 1996—the first state to do so.

Enron—who also made this list—even cut off power to manipulate prices, worsening the crisis. PG&E left bankruptcy in April 2004.

Thornburg Mortgage

Filed Chapter 11: May 2009

Value at bankruptcy: $36.5 billion

What happened: The housing crash and credit crunch doomed the mortgage lender. Thornburg's fall demonstrated that the crisis went far beyond subprime lenders; Thornburg "specialized in making mortgages larger than $417,000 to borrowers with good credit."

Chrysler

AP Images

Filed Chapter 11: April, 2009

Value at bankruptcy: $39.3 billion

What happened: As the financial crisis spread to the wider economy and threatened automakers, President Obama intervened and ordered Chrysler into bankruptcy. The United Automobile Workers were given control of the company, with the federal government and Italian carmaker Fiat as minority stakeholders.

Conseco

Filed Chapter 11: 2002

Value at bankruptcy: $61.4 billion

What happened: The insurer and financial firm overaggressively acquired companies in the 90s. Its purchase of Green Tree Financial, a financier of mobile-home sales, was particularly damaging in the long run.

General Motors

What happened: The pillar of American manufacturing, already hurt by years of weakening sales, was dealt a death blow by the financial crash. Only a government bailout saved the firm from annihilation.

WorldCom

Filed Chapter 11: July 2002

Value at bankruptcy: $103.9 billion

What happened: The telecommunications heavyweight joined Tyco and Enron in early-2000s accounting and executive malpractice scandals. CEO Bernie Ebbers went to jail for what was then the "largest corporate fraud in U.S. history."

WorldCom left bankruptcy renamed MCI in 2004 and was purchased by Verizon in 2005.